At first only the stairs fell. Then, brick by brick the building crumbled to the ground. I watched it all happen. Slowly, as if the building was carefully laying itself to rest.

Now I am on the roof. I make poems out of skyscrapers, while they come tumbling down.

There were people inside.

I went off in search of my lamp. The one with the red rose on its base. The one from my grandmother. I found it at his house. Only one of the gold petals was missing. This upset me, but I was also happy to have retrieved my light fixture.

My parent’s friends arrived in couples. Each one was pregnant. Ashamed, I wrote on the blackboard:

Don’t travel so much. Make Rituals.

I was warning the pregnant women how to raise their babies right. With my own child, I was hiding from someone in particular. When they passed by, I held up a newspaper so they could not see us behind the pages. I am not sure why we were hiding and nothing happened.

The older gentleman had a fondness for my sister and I. When he let us drive away in his car I knew it was because one day his kids would be old, just like us. Because, in us, he saw his own children.

I was late for my bicycle ride, but happy to discover a new path leading out my backdoor. It led though a trimmed lawn and into an English garden, curved around a bed of tightly-wound roses, past another home that I had not noticed before.

It was a glass house. When you looked inside an ocean reflected off the windows.

He spent days working on his house. I didn’t know what he was doing until I found him one day, hammering solar panels onto his roof. His entire roof was covered in solar panels. He was focused and full of pride, so I didn’t bother the progress being made. Instead, I invited the girls in. They came bolting through my house, dashing down the halls. Wild, like children. When they noticed my cat, they asked me her name. I couldn’t remember until I was reminded it changes depending on who’s in the room.

She was a powerful force and a seductress and she invited me into her room, where she had drilled a hole so deep into the ceiling. A hammock hung from there. I asked her how she would repair the hole. She told me it couldn’t be fixed, but frank and without emotion, like she didn’t care about the destruction she caused.

We were dancing in a circle. My silky aqua-green dress splayed out and made waves around me. We moved so gracefully that we almost took flight. And we were only waiting for the party to begin. While people gathered we observed each other’s tattoos. One girl had a tattooed heart on the back of her neck. Only I saw the pink scar she was covering up underneath. Not to worry that there were train tracks running directly through her kitchen. She didn’t seem too bothered by this inconvenience. In fact, she was quite cheerful at the party.

We were laughing and skipping stones down the stone staircase. As the rocks fell, they made a hollow sound. The next stone I threw was crimson red. In the shape of a heart. It cascaded down the staircase and landed in my shirt. The next stone was the same. This time it tumbled into his hands. We looked at each other and we knew.

I was in his backyard looking at his things. On the fence was a hanging object – a framed hub cap in the shape of a spiral. I was amidst his mess. The table was covered with dirty dishes, left-over food, and beer cans. There was a party there the night before and I was not invited. I only got the remains. I was not supposed to be there rummaging through the wreckage.

I was standing in line to buy shoes. Two pairs. Black sandals and blue high-tops. I also bought a container of liquid to make the shoes, but the cashier said that was not possible. Shoes were not made of liquid. Then, she took out a large pair of scissors and cut off all my hair. It looked terrible. I was standing there, hopeless and ugly (and without any shoes).